| State of California - The Resource Agency |
| DEPARTMENT OF PARKS AND RECREATION |
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| *Resource Name or #: |
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Survey Title: |
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| B1. |
| Historic Name: |
LUKENS HOUSE (THEODORE PARKER)
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| B2. |
| Common Name: |
Lukens House
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| B3. |
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| B4. |
Present Use: |
Residence
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| *B5a. |
| Primary Architectural Style: |
Queen Anne
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| B5b. |
| Secondary Architectural Style: |
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| *B6. |
| Construction History: |
Date Built: |
1896
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| *B7. |
| Moved?: |
 Yes
 No
Unknown
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Date: |
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Original Location: |
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| *B8. |
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| *B9a. |
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| *B10. |
| Significance: |
Theme: |
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Area: |
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| Period of Significance: |
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Property Type: |
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| Applicable Criteria: |
| National Register Criteria: |
B, C
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California Register: |
2, 3
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Local Register: |
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The Lukens house is one of the few remaining Victorians in Pasadena and one of the oldest houses in the city. The house is its setting exudes great presence and charm. Despite its large size (5000 sq. ft.), it has a fairy-land quality because of its delicate and finely wrought detailed dripping lathwork. Architectural writers David Gebhard and Robert Winter, in their Guide to Architecture in Los Angeles and Southern California, describe the Lukens house as “one of the few vestiges of Victorianism left in the central city – and is a gone one” (p. 343). Its unique and abundant decoration make it an exceedingly fine specimen worthy of preservation. The house is also significant because of its architect, Harry Ridgeway, and its original owner, Theodore Parker Lukens. Ridgway was the first professional architect in Pasadena; he is noted for the quality and volume of his work as well as the diversity of styles in which he designed with equal ease. Theodore Parker Lukens is an important figure in Southern California because of his early association with the Sierra Club, his pioneering reforestation efforts and his many civic offices as a pillar of early Pasadena.
Transplanted Canadian Harry Ridgway was born in 1843. In 1878, just four years after the Pasadena area had been settled by a group of Indiana colonists, he became the first architect to open an office here. In 1884 he became associated with C. B. Ripley, Pasadena’s earliest contractor and builder, in a business venture: the first planing mill in the city which supplied lumber, house trimmings and furnishings for many of Pasadena’s earliest structures. Ridgway’s output was prodigious: he designed and built several hundred residences, nearly all of Pasadena’s school buildings, the Public Library, several churches and almost all of the commercial structures on West Colorado Blvd., the early central district. Among his notable individual buildings are the First National Bank, the Masonic Temple, the old Throop Institute (California Institute of Technology), the Arcade and Carlton Hotels, and Pasadena City Jail. Although almost all of Ridgway’s buildings have been demolished or drastically altered, the Lukens House and Hillmont (1887), two of the finest of Pasadena’s Victorian s, remain. Ridgway died a t his home in Pasadena in September 1913.
Theodore Parker Lukens, who built this house, arrived in Pasadena in 1880. He was the first real estate promoter in Pasadena and was a banker. He was elected Justice of the Peace in 1884, served as President of the Pasadena City Council (Mayor) 1890-1896, President of the Pasadena Board of Trade, President of the Pasadena Mutual Building and Loan Association, Member of Boards of Directors of Republican Star newspaper (1890), Los Angeles State Normal School (member), Throop Institute (now California Institute of Technology)and member of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. He was also active in the development of the Pasadena City Library and he promoted the city as a business and tourist center.
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| B11. |
| Additional Resource Attributes: |
HP02
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| *B12. |
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| B13. |
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| *B14. |
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